How Yahoo Finance livestreamed the Berkshire annual meeting

Adweek magazine examined how Yahoo Finance able to livestream the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting from Omaha, Nebraska last year.

Adweek writes, “It all started with an email from Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. ‘It said, ‘Call me,'” recalled Yahoo Finance editor Andy Serwer. ‘So, I called him up. And he said ‘I’ve got this idea. What do you think about livestreaming my annual meeting?’ And I said ‘yes’ as quickly as I could!’

Challenge
“Upwards of 40,000 people travel to Omaha, Neb., for the annual meeting, but a continuous global livestream would bring the daylong event to the world. ‘Five-hundred thousand people in China watched it live. And that was with a 12-hour time difference,’ said Serwer.

Goal
“Yahoo needed to find sponsors to help defray the costs. TD Ameritrade and Scottrade signed on as pre-show and halftime report sponsors. ‘They were thrilled with the fact that it was a global stream and that close to 40 percent of the streams actually happened overseas,’ noted Yahoo global revenue chief Lisa Utzschneider.

Execution
“The first-of-its-kind meeting was Buffett’s idea. ‘I asked him later why he came to us,’ said Serwer. ‘He said there were several reasons: you successfully executed an NFL game. (The Buffalo Bills-Jacksonville Jaguars matchup in October 2015 netted 15.2 million viewers.) You have the technology to do it. You have the global platform. And, then he also said, ‘I have this relationship with you and I know that I can just call you up anytime and get through to you.””

Chris Roush is the Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.